The name for the Short's Brewing Co. beer Space Rock came about, founder and CEO Joe Short said, because the brew "is so good it's like crack, it's like rock," and "then we have this infatuation with outer space." Weird beer names are a standard in the industry.

Axle Brewing Co. to debut limited-release Very Stable Genius beer

Name of beer based on President Donald Trump tweet

Part of a brewing landscape with tens of thousands of beers a year to be named

Naming a beer is like making a joke: There's no proven methodology. Inspiration comes chiefly from the minds of the makers, their influences and their interplay as they go about their daily routines.

Royal Oak-based Axle Brewing Co. went the political route last week, gaining some media mileage from plans to debut a limited-edition beer with a gimmicky name based on a tweet by President Donald Trump.

Axle Brewing Co.

The Very Stable Genius pale-style beer from Axle Brewing Co. debuts in February. The name comes from a tweet by President Donald Trump.

The "Very Stable Genius" pale-style beer is a riff on Trump's Saturday reaction to the publication of "Fire and Fury," a controversial account of his presidency by Michael Wolff. In the tweet, Trump described himself as a "genius .... and a very stable genius at that!"

It's one of a series of politically themed brews rolled out by the state's many microbreweries and brewpubs. It's part and parcel of a brewing landscape that has more than 5,300 breweries nationwide, meaning tens of thousands of beers a year need to be named.

Short's Brewing Co. founder and CEO Joe Short said he generally likes creativity to come from within the Bellaire brewery's bubble, without influence from industry trends. But as brewing has ballooned in recent years, he said they've started "name checking now, because there's a lot of, funnily enough, similar concepts out there. We'll do a quick search. Sometimes we're not alone."

These seemingly endless beer names come from music, movies, inside jokes, geographic regions, efforts to highlight specific ingredients and general wordplay — "There are only so many hops puns that are gonna make a consumer excited to pick the beer up," Batch Brewing Co. Co-founder Stephen Roginson said.

Batch Brewing Co. via Facebook

Names of Batch Brewing Co. beers include BBA Better Together, Dicksmasher in the Rye and Black Knight Satellite. Weird beer names are common in the industry, and they're inspired by everything from music to daily routine and inside jokes.

Some tell a story, like Batch's Second to Last Word sour ale, which is inspired by the Last Word, a prohibition-era cocktail that originated at the Detroit Athletic Club.

Names can also come from a desire to broadcast the brand's image — like showcasing local ingredients — but others make less direct sense and come about organically through "verbal volleyball," Roginson said.

"The best beer-naming process is what happens when you're sitting around with your buddies ... and you're telling jokes to each other to crack each other up," he said.

The name for the Short's Brewing Co. beer Space Rock came about, Short said, because the brew "is so good it's like crack, it's like rock," and "then we have this infatuation with outer space."

Short also gave a recent example of how he keeps his ear open for names: "I just got a Gchat (message) from one of my brewers, (Tony Hansen), who must have been cruising around online and found this picture of Chuck Norris advertising 'Action Pants,'" he said. "And I was like, yeah, that would be fun."

Action Pants beer doesn't exist yet, but maybe someday.

The political side

Axle Brewing has huge expectations for its Very Stable Genius beer, which will be available for a limited time starting in February in Axle's Livernois Tap taproom and restaurant, which opened in Ferndale.

"It's definitely gonna be, you know, huge and, like, really delicious and very powerful, but also limited and fragile and delicate," Axle Brewing President Dan Riley said of the new brew.

"Do you want me to stay in character?" he asked.

All joking aside, Riley said he isn't sure how the beer will do. But there's little risk for Axle, whose scale means it can try out new brews in small batches to experiment and judge customers' tastes.

The company may also donate some of the sales from Very Stable Genius to a charitable organization, he said.

This isn't the brewery's first beer with a political reference in its name, either. The "14th Amendment" is a popular Kölsch-style beer named after the change to the constitution that promised all citizens equal protection under the law, and "AlternaFacts" was a black India pale ale that had a limited run.

And Axle Brewing isn't the only microbrewery referencing politicians with its beer brewed in Michigan.

The Lansing Brewing Co. opened its doors just over two years ago with a crowd-pleasing beer that reflected the capital city's bombastic mayor, Virg Bernero, called "Angry Mayor IPA."

On Tuesday, the Lansing brewery owned by real estate developer Pat Gillespie unveiled a new cream ale called "Schor Style" in honor of the city's new mayor, Andy Schor.

The Grand Rapids Brewing Co. appears to have been one of the first brewers in the state to name a beer after a politician. For at least five years, the brewery has had a beer on tap called the Rosalynn Bliss Blonde, named after the mayor of what's sometimes called "Beer City USA" when she was still a city commissioner.